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The 20-year-old's remains were discovered unclothed and decomposed about a quarter-mile south of Hecktown Road in Lower Nazareth on Dec. 12, 1987, according to state police.
Authorities say that she was murdered, but no official cause of death seems to appear in the public record. A contemporaneous report from the Allentown Morning Call claimed Pensyl had no wounds or trauma on her body when found.
Still, loved ones were immediately suspicious.
“There was foul play,” the 20-year-old's mother told the newspaper on Dec. 19, 1987. “(Caralee) didn’t walk in there," she said, referring to the cornfield.
Born Caralee LaLaine Dabinett in 1966, Pensyl had a "hard life," according to the Morning Call report. She had dropped out of school at 15 to marry Verdon A. Pensyl, her mother told the newspaper, and was in a serious car crash shortly after giving birth to her first child.
The wreck broke her leg and shattered her knee, leaving telltale bone damage that would eventually help authorities identify her decomposed remains, the Call reported.
Pensyl was last seen alive months before her body was found on Oct. 20, though her husband did not report her missing until Nov. 25, according to troopers. He told authorities that their marriage was strained and that it was not uncommon for him to go days without seeing her, the Morning Call wrote in 1992.
By that time, authorities were officially calling Pensyl a murder victim, but they admitted that toxicology testing still had not revealed her cause of death.
Before she disappeared on Oct. 20, Pensyl and her husband were living in Harmony Township, New Jersey, with their two children, troopers said. She was employed by a Bridgewater-based security firm and was assigned to the New York Life Insurance site in Lebanon, New Jersey, according to police and contemporaneous reporting.
Anyone with information on her death is asked to call the Pennsylvania Crime Stoppers at 1-800-472-8477 or submit a tip anonymously online.
A $5,000 reward is offered for information that leads to an arrest and conviction.
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